Esteemed physicist Professor Stephen Hawking has dramatically warned 'the end of the world is nigh'.

The Cambridge University-based genius claims we have got less than 600 years left as a species to do something before a “ball of fire” engulfs the Earth.

In a video appearance at the 2017 Tencent WE Summit in Beijing on Sunday, the world-renowned scientist warned that overcrowding and energy consumption could bring about a fiery end to the planet within 600 years.

The end would come in a “ball of fire,” he is reported to have said, according to the Cambridge News .

To save itself, mankind must take a cue from American TV series Star Trek and “boldly go where no one has gone before,” he said in the appearance.

Professor Hawking has predicted the end of civilisation - on earth (Image: PA)

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Stephen Hawking sees Breakthrough Starshot as the answer

Professor Hawking sees an answer in Breakthrough Starshot, the $100 million research and engineering program announced in 2016. The A Brief History of Time author and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg sit on the project’s board.

Professor Hawking said of the interstellar space travel programme: “The idea behind this innovation is to have the nanocraft ride on the light beam.

“Such a system could reach Mars in less than an hour, or reach Pluto in days, pass Voyager in under a week and reach Alpha Centauri in just over 20 years.”

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The Alpha Centauri star system, the closest star system to the Solar System, is 25 trillion miles (4.37 light years) away but with today’s fastest spacecraft, it would take about 30,000 years to get there.

Breakthrough Starshot aims to establish whether a gram-scale nanocraft, on a sail pushed by a light beam, can fly over a thousand times faster to reach the three-star system where astronomers estimate that there is a reasonable chance of an Earth-like planet existing.